At his first three stops in the minor leagues Seth Mejias-Brean hit .305/.386/.478 with 120 walks and 161 strikeouts in 1074 plate appearances. He showed the ability to hit for average, draw plenty of walks, hit for some power and showed a good contact rate as he struckout just 15% of the time he stepped to the plate.
Things haven’t gone nearly as smooth in Double-A. In 425 plate appearances with Pensacola, the third baseman has hit .244/.341/.334 with 52 walks and 80 strikeouts. His walk rate has remained the same, but everywhere else, he has seen a decline in his numbers. His strikeout rate has jumped from 15% to 18.9% while his average and isolated power (slugging-average) have dropped off considerably.
The jump from Advanced-A to Double-A is often viewed as the biggest jump in baseball, which could be part of the reason he has tailed off some. Another part could be that as an opposite field hitter, the home stadium doesn’t play well for him as right field in Pensacola crushes power output.
In his 237 career plate appearances in Pensacola he has hit just one home run, while in 188 road plate appearances he has hit three. He does have 12 total extra-base hits at home and only nine on the road.
No matter who you slice it though, it’s been a rough transition to the Double-A level. In 2015 he’s only hitting .259/.354/.353, but he’s on the upswing. Over his last 11 games, the former Arizona product has been on fire. As noted, he’s only had 12 total extra-base hits at home in 233 plate appearances. Three of those have come in this stretch and he added one on the road in the last 11 games, hitting .390/.468/.488 with four doubles over that span.
Coming out of college, Mejias-Brean was noted for above-average raw power and it began to show up at the lower levels, but it’s been mostly absent in Double-A. He’s started to hit for some more power in the last week, and if it’s more than just a bit of a hot streak, it could really turn around his struggles at the level. His walk rate and strikeout rates have been at levels that should lead to success, but his power output has held him back.